L'espace d'un souffle (2018) Painting by Odile Degand

Self-taught? yes and no.

Yes, because I did not follow any diploma training, and no, because I owe a lot to the various teachers whose classes I have followed throughout my life since adolescence . All of them brought me a lot, through their technical advice and their personal artistic sensibility in the fields of drawing, painting, photography and art history.

Their teaching and their encouragement was invaluable to me.

After a self-taught experiment in oil painting, a first training in drawing, led by Roger Toulouse (Orlean artist, painter, sculptor and poet) confirmed in the desire to progress in the artistic field.

Later, a training spread over ten years, offered in the professional context, opened the doors of contemporary art to me by experimentation with multiple techniques and materials. My personal practice was then enriched with scrappings, collages, inks and pastels.

By discovering the works of contemporary artists with very varied modes of expression, I was then able to touch the porosity of the boundary between figuration and abstraction. It is a decisive element for my personal practice because I like to travel between figuration and abstraction.

Fascinated by the plant and animal world from my childhood, spent in Africa far from urban centers, I have always was inspired by the natural elements. Later, a few trips to the Maghreb and then to Asia reinforced my taste and my knowledge of non-Western cultures.

My practice remains essentially focused on the effects of light in interaction with landscapes and natural elements. : sky, clouds, water, rocks and plants, while allowing me to go back and forth with the techniques discovered and practiced over the years.

However, I don't forbid myself any theme, having started by painting figures and portraits in oil, influenced as I was then by the painters of the Italian Renaissance and those of French Classicism. Since then, many other pictorial schools and artists, especially from the 20th century, have imprinted my memory. Their influence inevitably emerges from time to time in my paintings.

Having completed my professional life, I was able to devote more time to painting by attending art classes for more than ten years. André Malraux School of Art in Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

A few exhibitions, alone or in a group, allowed me to confront myself with the gaze and appreciations of an audience with very diverse requirements. First of all with the Orléanais Artists who allowed me to exhibit some works for the first time, then later, with the Magenta Group in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, and finally in trio in recent years, in the Lot- et-Garonne and Dordogne.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1951
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary French Artists